Hawaii's tsunami warning: How the US is better prepared.

Awareness of tsunami hazards has heightened in recent years, following a magnitude 9.3 earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra in December 2004. Tsunamis the quake generated struck the coastal city of Banda Aceh, killing nearly 178,000 people.

The additional data these buoys provide, combined with advanced models of the sea floor along coasts and the behavior of tsunamis as they radiate from their source, allow forecasters to constantly refine their projections of likely wave height at landfall.